Date: Mon, 21 May 2001 13:20:29 -0500 From: "Jason Halbert" <res02jw5@gte.net> To: "Dan Nelson" <dnelson@emsphone.com>, "Ceri" <ceri@techsupport.co.uk> Cc: <Adyas@twowaytv.com>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: uptime limits Message-ID: <BGEMLPNNHJHKCPDPBMGGKEKJCAAA.res02jw5@gte.net> In-Reply-To: <20010521091544.A25239@dan.emsphone.com>
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What _is_ the big thing with uptime anyway? Yes, I am fairly impressed with myself when I go 3 to 6 or 9 months without rebooting. I do like upgrading my box though. Even if you have a really high loaded web server or something, you could switch the load to another machine, perform the upgrade, reboot and be back online in no time. I really do not understand this obsession with uptime. If people are trying to draw a line between stability (not crashing) and uptime, then this is a moot point. _We_ all know that FreeBSD is rock solid. That is, if you do everything right, then mostly likely a crash of destructive proportions is not likely. Most of the time a FreeBSD box is just going to sit and "whistle while it works", as it were, provided people do take care of it. I agree with Ceri on this one. --- Jason jason@jason-n3xt.org -----Original Message----- From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Dan Nelson Sent: Monday, May 21, 2001 09:16 To: Ceri Cc: Adyas@twowaytv.com; freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: uptime limits In the last episode (May 21), Ceri said: > On Mon, May 21, 2001 at 04:05:24PM +0300, Odhiambo Washington said: > > * Alex Dyas <ADyas@twowaytv.com> [20010521 15:36]: writing on the subject 'RE: uptime limits' > > > If you have an uptime of 497 days then you basically have a > > > system riddled with security holes. > > > > This assumes that a reboot is necessary to apply a security patch. > > Is this necessarily the case? For instance, an upgrade of Bind to > > patch a hole wouldn't mean powering the system down would it? > > No, but fixing anyone of the 10 exploits in the kernel category since > Jan 10th 2000 (497 days ago) would. Yes, I have a list ;^) > > Admittedly, I wasn't aware that there was a marketing spin to all this. > I can imagine the marketing department's spin on that already : > ``Yeah well Apache's been fux0red for months and we can't get > that sendmail thing working properly but at least we didn't > reboot yet.'' Neither Apache or Sendmail upgrades require a reboot, though. Assuming you have a decent firewall that blocks odd TCP packets, and don't allow shells on your machine, there really aren't very many security holes that require a kernel upgrade. -- Dan Nelson dnelson@emsphone.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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